Every once in a while I'll get engaged where a piece of media where one character has a highly specific and non-obvious speaking quirk, which I myself don't notice but another fan or friend far more unwell than me will catch onto and inform me of. And then it's like I'm part of the secret true universe and any fan content breaking the rule will, inadvertently and in ways I cannot fault them for, brand themselves an imposter.
Garnet StevenUniverse does not ask questions. Jax TheAmazingDigitalCircus does not curse. Probably 80% of the Homestuck fuckers have some flavor of this but I'm not unwell enough for that.
Every time I see bullshit about women never EVER being able to beat men in any sport, I think about how in martial arts classes I, a cis woman, 5' 8" and 145 pounds, regularly beat the tar out of 6' 2" 230 pound cis dude weightlifters. One guy ragequit class. He came in cocky as hell and talking the standard bs line about how a woman simply never could beat a man in a fight because they're physically weaker and our instructor was like. Okay. Put the pads on you're sparring her. Yes, her, the one 4" shorter and 100 pounds lighter than you.
It wasn't close I beat the pants off that man, and others like him. I did it more than once. Some guys got humble and stayed. One guy got angry and stormed out.
And I think about that every fuck damn time I hear that bullshit, which seems to be all the fuck over the place these days. Oh, women are just fragile little soft delicate flower creatures who can't do ANYTHING and could NEVER compete with big strong manly muscular strong MEN.
I think about driving that dude into the mats and seeing the brutal reality of this big dude's misogany meet the realization that a woman was beating his ass literally that second, that none of his strength could stop the fact that I'd just hip thrown him facefirst into the mats and that had I actually connected with the axe kick to his neck I would have crushed a bunch of important shit and he could not stop me, and his whole psyche collapsing like a dying star in that moment.
Anyway, don't ever fall for it, ladies, and there's absolutely no goddamn reason to get your knickers in a twist about trans people in sports.
While a counterexample does disprove an absolute rule I think the fact of sex/gender physical differences does still apply in general
I udnerstand that in fight sports a smaller person might be able to get their opponent to shift their bulk disadvantageously and that bodybuilders might have great muscle definition but not as much practical strength, that a trained women might beat an inexpert man even though the expert man would still win against the expert woman
I've been to the competitions. The sparring is coed. Do you wanna see my trophies? Like I'm at work rn but when I get home I will go photograph the trophies.
Other women in martial arts, I'm encouraging you rn to post your trophies about this.
The world champion in HEMA longsword combat for years running was a woman. She won that against equally trained men.
A story I read once discussed three pillars of power - strength, speed, and skill, and if one combatant is significantly more skilled than the other they are generally going to win even if the person is stronger and faster.
In coed combat sports, even when the gender balance is equal, all the women are getting a lot more practice than the men in how to fight a stronger opponent with longer reach. The biggest guy there is never going to learn how to fight someone bigger than him and a small woman is basically going to excel in it just from experience.
I am writing these words after my father came out of surgery to remove a cancerous tumor, which he needs to have every three months. This time, the doctors found two very large masses and four small cancerous masses.
While my father should be in a fully equipped hospital to treat his life-threatening illness, he goes every three months to a medical tent (a mobile field hospital) to undergo surgery that requires general anesthesia, highly skilled doctors, and ongoing treatment. All of this is happening amidst the ongoing siege of the Gaza Strip and the shortage of medical staff, food supplies, and medications.
I don't want to lose my father before my eyes while I have the opportunity to buy medicine and perhaps get him out of this devastated city of Gaza, which is being bombed and besieged, and where medicine and food are being prevented from entering. With your donations, we can save my father and give him a life like everyone else suffering from this disease. Please don't hesitate to donate, and donate now to save his life. Please.
please spare what you can for nader and his family; his father's cancer has been worsening and on top of medical needs this money also goes to taking care of basic necessity for this family
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ME: hold up. you see that? train's been through here
FRIEND: how can you tell
ME: tracks. they're not fresh, maybe 60, 80 years old
FRIEND: no chance it'll come back, then
ME: don't be so sure. That's well within their lifespan... and they're highly territorial
something about Ragatha having people around her when she entered the circus is crazy, like for some reason i just always assumed the characters were alone when putting on the headset like Pomni. what are those people seeing? were they her friends? was she dared to put the headset on? many thoughts indeed.
okay so, guy at work, who i find out afterwards is famous at this place for being a sex pest, comes up and starts with what i also learn is his favorite opener to conversations where he’s going to be a sex pest, namely: “Do you know where the term ‘blow job’ comes from?”
and here he made his first fatal error. his moment of hubristic sex pesting. because of course i know where the term blow job comes from, i love learning about sex and the history of sexual terms! i know so much about oral sex that i could write a book on it!
his second error: approaching a little autistic freak with what he intended to be an uncomfortable sex question that would make me feel weird and gross. Friends, Romans, Countrymen, I Have Never Misjudged A Man’s Intentions So Incredibly In My Life. because i did not realize he was trying to harass me. because i love talking about sex facts, albeit not usually at work. unless. someone prompts me. my coworkers are the kind of people who are generally online enough to know terms, but not exactly what they mean, and they realized they could ask me a while back and get good answers without the resulting awkwardness because i do not experience shame. i am primed to answer questions like the one he has proposed.
So I Answered It.
and well, really, what happened is that I began answering it, then realized the answer required a bit more context. I mean, you can’t just say “oh, well, the term first appears in writing in the 1940s” without first explaining that ‘blow’ by itself already had sexual connotations for centuries, and then, really, are we talking about the origin of the term or the origin of the act. and well we have a ton of literature and art depicting fellatio throughout human history, did you know a lot of it was men performing it on other men? oh, that reminds me, there are a multitude of latin words for oral sex performed on penises, and hold on let me quote you the entirety of catullus 16 from memory and explain it’s fascinating insights into the roman world of homosexuality-
i do not know how to turn any of this ^ off, by the way. i’m sure some people out there have a switch that disables their infodumping mid-speech. i do not. and i also didn’t realize he wasn’t looking for a real answer until my other coworker explained so hours later. he could not excuse himself from the conversation he started, and i made a conservative man at least 30 years older than me to listen to my catullus recitation. i will sodomize and facefuck you, indeed.
anyway, i think i got a bad grade in being sexually harassed. my pro tip is maybe don’t start with what a very autistic individual will misconstrue as you earnestly asking them to explain sex to you. the special interest shield will cause splashback damage.
trying to figure out if a memory of mine actually happened or if its a hallucination a dream i had or a lie i told a bunch of times and forgot was a lie
being a humanities major who’s friends with stem majors is so funny because you’ll ask your friends what they’re doing today and they’re like “UGH it’s so stressful i have to stabilize the reactor core for my nuclear power midterm and then i have to build the supercomputer from i have no mouth yet i must scream for my electrical engineering homework :/ what about you” and you’re like “oh well i have to read a fun little book and write an essay about gender.” and they still think you have it worse
Being a stem major who's friends with humanities majors is ALSO funny bc you ask what's goin on with them and they're like "oh yeah my day's pretty good! I only have to read 50 pages for this one class today and half a book for another one. It's much better than last week where I read three books and wrote a 10 page paper about their overlapping motifs for one class while also researching a niche period of time that our library doesn't have any resources on. How's it been for you?" and you're like "oh I have a lil packet of fun math puzzles due tomorrow." and they look at you like you're carrying the weight of the universe on your back
This is your reminder that just because something falls within the skillset you've practiced, so you can do it and you don't find it particularly hard or stressful relative to other things, it doesn't mean it isn't actually hard work you should be proud of yourself for accomplishing!
